Essential LightWave 3D- P17 docx

Figure 18-25 Figure 18-26: When you render this time, what you see is a “whole other story.” Every point in the object is handled as a HyperVoxel particle!. HyperVoxel “Sprites”Something

4 Back under the Geometry tab,

set the Blending Mode for both

nulls to Additive Then, under

Blending Group, you’ll need tocreate a new group Name this

group Mix, and set it as the

Blending Group for both nulls.

An <F9> shows that the twospheres now “blob” into oneanother! (Wherever the dashedlines representing the influences ofthe HyperVoxel surfaces, seen inFigure 18-16, come in contact withanother whose Blending Mode isalso set to Additive and which isalso a part of the same blendinggroup, the “surfaces” begin to

“reach toward” one another —behaving like a viscous liquid.)

Figure 18-18: An <F9> shows two different colored spheres

that slightly intersect.

Figure 18-19

Figure 18-20

PC-Specific InfoSince we’re using Dented, PC results will vary from the results shown here, which are rendered on a Mac.

6 Clear your scene and load the Ground object from the companion

Voxel-CD

(Objects\Chapter18\Voxel-Ground.lwo) Move your camera in

so that it matchesFigure 18-23 and

then press <F9>

to do a test der Your resultswill look a lot likeFigure 18-24 Notvery interesting,huh?

ren-Figure 18-21

Figure 18-22: The HyperTexture actually affects the silhouette of the HyperVoxel surface You can see it smoothly blending into the left voxel, which doesn’t have a HyperTexture assigned.

5 How does the HyperTexture work with

HyperVoxel surfaces? For the Right

null, click to the HyperTexture tab, and

set its Texture to Dented, its Scale to

2.45, its Frequency to 0.605, and its

Texture Amplitude to –7% (Power and

Octaves should already be at 3 and 6,

respectively.) Set the Scale for all three

axes to 100 mm (See Figure 18-21.)

7 Bring up the HyperVoxels interface,

and activate HyperVoxels for

VoxelGround Then open the Presets

window and select the Rock library.

Double-click on Rocky to load its

set-tings onto your HyperVoxel object

When LW asks if you’d like to keep

your current particle size when loading

the settings for Rocky, click No since

after we load the settings, we need to

change Particle Size to 3 m anyway.

Set Size Variation to 5% (this will make

each particle deviate by a fixed-random

number of between +/– 5%)

(See Figure 18-25.)

8 Press <F9> to do another test

render While the render takes

quite a bit longer, the results

are well worth it Take a look at

the change shown in Figure

18-26

PC-Specific Info

The Rocky preset uses Dented as its

HyperTexture, so once again, this will

look different on a PC than what

you’re seeing here.

Figure 18-24: Doing an <F9> reveals pretty much what one would expect, given the scene in Figure 18-23.

Figure 18-25

Figure 18-26: When you render this time, what you see is a “whole other story.” Every point in the object is handled as a HyperVoxel particle! Because all these particles are in the same object, they all blend smoothly into one another.

(Scenes\Chapter_18\HV_Land-scape_ F.lws is the scene used to

create Figure 18-26.)

HyperVoxel “Sprites”

Something you can do that greatly reduces

the time LightWave needs to render

Hyper-Voxels is to not render the whole volume

but to render only a “slice” of it LightWave

doesn’t need to calculate the whole volume,

only a tiny fraction of it — a plane that runs

directly through its center, always aiming at

the viewer (camera or viewport angle).

This is similar in its result to “mapping”

our explosion sequence onto the plane in

the last chapter, except LightWave takes

care of all the details for us All we need to

do is use the reduced HyperVoxel controls

to set how our sprite looks, and LightWave

does the rest!

1 Start with a new scene running at 24

FPS Set the End Frame to 120 (for

both the scene itself and within the

Rendering Options) Add a null, naming

it HV_Sprite Set its Y position to

800 mm Then, under the camera’s

Motion Options, set the camera’s

Tar-get Item to HV_Sprite To give us

something a bit more exciting in the

“background department,” under

Effects | Backdrop, activate ent Backdrop and set the Zenith

Gradi-Color to 20, 0, 47, the Sky and Ground

Colors to 98, 92, 169, and the Nadir Color to 176, 182, 200 (See Figure

18-27.)

2 Next, activate HyperVoxels for

HV_Sprite Bring up the presets for

HyperVoxels, and open the Generic library Double-click on Sand_Explo-

sion to load in its settings, changing its

Particle Size to 2 m and its Object Type

to Sprite When you check Show

Par-ticles, you get much more than a linear

representation of the voxel — you get a

real-time image of the sprite, complete with OpenGL transparency (See Figure

18-28.) (To increase the detail of thesprite, choose a higher resolution fromthe Sprite Texture Resolution pop-upmenu; this will impact your graphicsaccelerator, however.)

Figure 18-28

Figure 18-29: A render of what we’ve done shows

us a “slice” of our voxel.

Figure 18-30

3 You can increase the quality of your

rendered voxel by increasing the

num-ber of slices (found on the Shading |

Basic tab) Comparing Figure 18-30

with Figure 18-29, there is a marked

increase in detail, and the render time

is still light-years away from the

lengthy render we would have were we

to set our Object Type to Volume

4 Now, let’s do something really cool

Under the Geometry tab, set the

Parti-cle Size to 20 m, the Stretch Direction

to Y, and the Stretch Amount to 4%

(this will “squish” our voxel down to

4% of its natural spherical shape along

the Y axis) You may as well deactivate

Show Particles, since the effect we’re

creating isn’t “captured” by the Show

Particles engine Under the Shading |

Basic tab, set Color to 200, 200, 200,

Luminosity to 100%, Opacity to 0%,

Density to 80%, and Number of Slices

to 1 Then, under the HyperTexture

tab, set Texture to Dented

(double-check that Scale is 4, Power is 3,

Fre-quency is 0.8, and Octaves is 6) Set

Noise Type to Gradient Noise (just a

different kind of “fractal engine” ering our Dented procedural texture)

pow-Set Texture Amplitude to 150%, ture Effect to Turbulence, and Effect Speed to 50%.

Tex-(Double-check your settings against the

above text and Figure 18-31 If your tings don’t match mine, your render won’teither.)

set-A render shows something that lookslike high-altitude clouds What we’ve done

is quickly fake volumetric ground fog (the

misty, wispy stuff thathovers in quiet hollows

on nights when the moon

is full) You can move

through this ground fog,

and you can set the fog’s

exact position above the

ground by positioning thenull It won’t “catch”shadows very well, but ifyou ever try “real” volu-metric ground fog, you’llappreciate the

Figure 18-32

But wait! There’s more! If you act now

and render this scene to a movie, you’ll see

that you’ve not only created some nifty fake

ground fog, but you’ll see that this hack can

also be used to recreate the way clouds roil

in time-lapse photography! (Effect Speed is

the setting that controls the speed of the

roiling.)

Scenes\Chapter_18\HV_Sprite_

01_F.lws is the scene that created Figure

18-32 and the following movie: Renders\

Chapter18\RoilingClouds.mov.

1 Now, there’s something else

Hyper-Voxel sprites can do that is most

excellent Load in Scenes\Chapter_18\

HV_Sprite_02_Setup.lws to get us

ready to go with a null object “flying”

into frame from behind the camera

Figure 18-33

Figure 18-34

2 Activate HyperVoxels for the null Set

its Object Type to Sprite and its

Parti-cle Size to 400 mm, and check Show

Particles On the Shading | Basic tab,

set Color to 134, 201, 234, Luminosity

to 200%, Opacity to 100%, Density to

100%, and Number of Slices to 1.

Under the HyperTexture tab, set the

Texture to (none) (See Figure 18-34.)

3 I’ve created a sequence of frames thatlooks something like a science-fiction

“torpedo.” In the Image Editor, load

Images\TorpedoFrames\Torpedo_ 000.jpg Then, set its Image Type to Sequence (LightWave’s default han-

dling of the image sequence is shownhere) Then, on the Shading | Clips tab

of the HyperVoxel interface for your

null, select Torpedo_(sequence) from

the Add Clip pop-up menu Make sure

Alpha is set to Luminosity and that

Use Color, AntiAliasing, and Solid

are all checked Select Fixed Random

for the Frame Offset (See Figure18-36.)

Figure 18-35: The obligatory <F9> (Oooh, a blue

dot How nice.)

Figure 18-36

4 When rendering a movie of this scene,

I recommend using Enhanced Low

Antialiasing (without Adaptive

Sam-pling), Dithered Motion Blur, and a

Blur Length of 100% (Scenes\

Chapter_18\HV_ Sprite_02_F.lws is

the finished scene of this example, and

the movie of the final render is

Ren-ders\Chapter18\ Torpedo.mov.)

Figure 18-37: (Yet another <F9>.) Our “blue dot”

is now a glowing “bolt” of plasma that renders

extremely quickly.

Figure 18-38

A really cool thing about HyperVoxel sprite

clips is that you can load in more than one clip

onto an HV object Each clip will be assigned,

in turn, to the next point of the HV object’s

point order.

So, assuming you have a few nice clips of

some flame and smoke sequences, you could

(using particles, which we touch on next)

cre-ate the same fire effect as seen on the Balrog

in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

And (just to plant ideas in your head) using

Particle Age as the clip’s Frame Offset and

LightWave’s ability to have collisions “spawn”

new particles, you could have non-looping

clips of explosions “do their thing” when a

pro-jectile impacts its target! (For something even more complex, if you have clips of splashing water and create a particle simulation of water flowing where “splash” particles are spawned when the “water” particles collide with objects, you will have recreated the “two-and-a-half- D” used to create the breathtaking water

effects seen in feature films from Tarzan to The

Road to El Dorado.)

To find out how to have particles react with one another and with objects in your scene, dive into the LW manuals It’s all there for you, just waiting to be unearthed!

Particles

Note

As you may have guessed from the previous

parenthetical, I’m not going to show you

everything there is to know about LightWave

particles here (That would be a complete

book unto itself.) As with the rest of this

book, I’m going to show you the essentials.

You’ll have enough to start exploring and

learning on your own — where you go from

there is up to you!

1 Start with a fresh, new scene With

Objects selected, choose Items | Add

| Dynamic Obj | Particle Accept the

name Emitter and the Emitter Type of

HV Emitter (A little box will appear

when you click OK that represents the

place where the particles will be

emitted A little Properties window willalso open when you add an emitter thisway.) Under the Generator tab of theemitter’s Properties window, assign a

Birth Rate of 300 This means that 300

particles will be created each second, as

set in the Generated By pop-up menuimmediately below it Set the X, Y, and

Z of the Generator Size to 100 mm,

and set the Particle Limit (the mum number of particles on screen atany one time from this particular parti-

maxi-cle producer) to 300.

When you’re done with all that, set

the End Frame to 120, and then move the camera to –3 m in the Z axis.

Figure 18-39

Figure 18-40: There are a few ways to get to the Properties window for a PFX

(Particle FX) item With the object selected, you can choose FX Property from the

Plugins | Additional pop-up menu You can also open the Object Properties

window and double-click on the FX Emitter custom object entry on the Geometry

tab Or if you’d rather not open a separate window, you can make all of your

adjustments right in the Object Properties window by double-clicking the Effects

Emitter in the Dynamics tab.

2 On the Particle tab of the FX-Emitter

window, set Particle Weight +/– to

0.25 (which will make our particles

“weigh” between 0.75 and 1.25 units)

Set the Life Time (frame) to 120,

which will make each particle “live”

120 frames (the length of our scene)

before “dying” and being “reborn.”

Then, on the Motion tab, set

Explo-sion(m/s) to 5 (meters per second).

Move our emitter to –1 m on the Y

axis When you scrub the frame slider,

you see particles “exploding” from our

emitter (See Figure 18-41.)

3 Select Items | Add | Dynamic Obj |

Gravity (leaving it at X=0, Y=0,

Z=0) Set Gravity Mode to Point,

Fall-off Mode to OFF, Radius to 10 m, and

Power to –100% Now, when you scrub

the frame slider, you see your particles

“falling into” this “singularity” thatyou’ve created Although, unlike a

“true” singularity, the particles

con-tinue falling right on through the

gravi-tational central point, accelerating outthe other side (Maybe that’s the wayblack holes really do work — we have

no way to prove one way or the other.)

4 Let’s have a little bit of fun here

Before we do any rendering, add

Tex-tured Environment under Effects | Backdrop | Add Environment Click

on the Texture button to open the

Texture Editor window, and assign a

Procedural Texture to the Layer

Type Set the Procedural Type to

Underwater, Texture Color to 151,

0, 0, Wave Sources to 6, Wavelength

to 1, Wave Speed to 0.02, and Band Sharpness to 1 (This will make the

background of our render a little moreinteresting….) (See Figure 18-43.)

Figure 18-41

5 Activate HyperVoxels for the Emitter.

Then click on Load and choose

Sur-faces\HV_Surface_ch18.hv The

Select Settings window will appear

Leave everything checked, click OK,

then choose No when LightWave asks

if you’d like to keep your current cle size Doing this replaces theentirety of the HyperVoxel settings.(See Figure 18-44.)

parti-Figure 18-43

Figure 18-44

6 Lastly, before we render our scene, set

Light Type to Spotlight and Spotlight Soft Edge Angle to 30º This will give

our scene a little depth as the particlesmove through the spotlight’s “beam.”Frames from the final render have a kind ofsurrealist, expressionistic feel to them The

rendered movie of the scene (Renders\

Chapter18\Particles.mov) looks like it

would fit right in with the music of KimballCollins or Judge Jules

Conclusion

We’ve covered quite a bit of ground in this

chapter I’m sure you’ll agree that

Hyper-Voxels and particles are powerful tools for

creating special effects By exploring these

simulations and appreciating the levels of

detail their mathematics create, details no

one person could ever envision in theirentirety, you have hopefully touched uponone of the greatest truths: Knowing theanswer is not important Knowing how tosolve the question is

Figure 18-45

Figure 18-46

Simulations 2:

Dynamics

One of the most highly touted features of

LightWave 8 is the new Dynamics system,

consisting of hard and soft body simulators,

particle emitters, natural force generators,

collision objects, and effect linkers, each

with the ability to interact with one another

The attention given to these tools is well

deserved Dynamics allow you to imbue

your objects with real-world physical

properties such as weight, air resistance,and gravity They allow you to create every-thing from realistic-looking clothes todebris-filled explosions Complex effectsthat would take hours to animate by handcan now be done in a matter of minutes Inthis chapter, we’ll look at these incredibletools and cover the essential informationyou need to get started using them

An Introduction to Dynamics

dy·nam·ic Noun 1 An interactive system

or process, especially one involving

com-peting or conflicting forces

—Dictionary.com

When we talk about dynamics, we are

refer-ring to the simulation of real-world physical

properties within an artificial 3D

environ-ment As strange as it may seem, to a 3D

application such as LightWave, a leaf is just

as heavy as a car and concrete is as

perme-able as water That’s because 3D

applications cannot differentiate between

objects It’s all just points and polygons in

the eyes of the program Therefore, if we

want to simulate real-world phenomena, we

have to tell our software about the unique

characteristics of each object We have to

tell LightWave that a leaf is light, a car is

heavy, water is permeable, and concrete is

not We do this by adding a dynamic

property to the object This can be done byopening the Object Properties panel andclicking on the Add Dynamic pop-up menu

on the Dynamics tab

Figure 19-1: Dynamic properties can be added from the Object Properties panel.